1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer and telecommunication network monitoring and management systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for integrating multiple data sources into service-centric computer networking services diagnostic conclusions.
2. Background Information
Computer networks and the services they provide can generate numerous errors, faults, and other like events, the majority of which require different messages to be sent to the user and the occurrence and performance of many different complex actions for recovery. These events result from a variety of conditions, including configuration errors, hardware errors, communication errors, and the like.
Fault analysis and problem resolution is often handled manually by, for example, network administrators. Such administrators must understand the entire infrastructure of the network, the information technology (IT) resources that support it, and how the network and resources work together to deliver services. Incoming events must be continuously sifted through to detect those affecting the ability of an enterprise to sustain service levels. One problem with this approach is that an event can generate error or fault messages that often contain vague or incomplete information. The administrator must then decipher the message or perform additional work to determine the actual cause of the problem. Another difficulty with manual fault resolution is that one event can often generate multiple error or fault messages. Therefore, the administrator is often overwhelmed by the number of errors or faults and the accompanying computer network data that need to be analyzed. Furthermore, the analysis and review of such errors, faults and other computer network data is knowledge intensive, sometimes requiring information from sources not readily available to the administrator that could assist in analyzing the impact of network faults on services, business units and customers.
Some attempts have been made to implement fault analysis managers. However, these attempts have been unsuccessful due to the large amount of information that must be stored and the expert knowledge required. In some cases, fault analysis managers have been implemented with complicated software code that is called after an event is recognized. Other implementations have used “table driven” fault management. However, since each event can have many action codes and each unique error event/action code pair must be represented, these systems were inefficient in representation and storage. Furthermore, none of the methods integrate data from disparate sources that can be used to help pinpoint the probable cause of real or potential service delivery problems and present solutions for resolving them quickly.